I have a theory that two albums and a handful of EPs is all the Shoegazing any band has in them. After that, either the quality of the music falls off sharply, or the band moves on to something else. Curve‘s discography certainly backs up the validity of this theory. By the time they had released Cuckoo, their second Shoegazing album, Curve were already transitioning to a more Electronica influenced sound. Still good, but no longer Shoegazing.

Because of the tendency to release several EPs before putting out their first album, the best work of many Shoegaze bands is to be found on their early EPs. This is especially true of Curve; I don’t think there is another band in the genre who has produced a handful of EPs to rival the first five from Curve.

There is a total of nineteen songs on these five EPs, and all but four of them made it to my iPod. Of those four, “I Speak Your Every Word” and “The Colour Hurts” were left out solely because of persistent “popping” I can hear only when using headphones or earbuds.

As someone who has recently been in a position of having to decide which CDs to sell, and which to keep, I have come to realize that, although I own a few more rare and valuable CDs, these five EPs would be the last I’d let go; they are the heart of my collection.

One Response to A Handful of Curves

Yep, these are Cold Dead Hands discs. I’m rediscovering Curve right now. They were most definitely my favourite band of the early 1990s. Annoyingly, I left the country for nine months, they split up, I heard nothing more about them until hearing a news item on 6 Music saying they’d split up again.